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At Michigan State University, a major university booster and donor threw a retirement fete for the investigator now charged with determining the university's culpability in decades of sexual assault; the same donor, Peter Secchia, has made substantial political contributions to Bill Schuette, the Republican attorney general and gubernatorial candidate who appointed that investigator, William Forsyth.

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler, appointed interim MSU president last week and charged with leading the school out of its current morass, also has deep ties to Secchia, an unabashed MSU partisan.

At the University of Michigan, a Free Press investigation documented a pattern: University donors who helm investment firms sit on the school's investment advisory board, and often see the school's dollars directed back toward their own firms. Because a state law U-M lobbied for shields the performance of those funds from public view, there's no way to assess whether those investments bear out in the university's favor.

But these are the sorts of cozy relationships and secretive practices we condemn in legislative government — the kind of legal, backroom, in-the-club dealings that make regular people feel the system is rigged against them. That the echelons of power are closed to anyone who isn't already there. That our institutions exist only to serve the rich and powerful.

This merry-go-round of cash and influence is bad enough when it distorts the legislative and regulatory process. That public universities are mimicking Lansing's worst practices is even more disappointing.

Public universities are a promise to the future, a state's acknowledgement of the critical role education plays in its prosperity and stability.

Sure, jobs are a part of the picture. But at the heart of public higher education is the radical notion that knowledge should be available to all, regardless of income or social station.

At U-M and MSU, donors' contributions to the schools' endowments, or for particular projects, rival or exceed state support. Donors and administrators frankly acknowledge that influence is part of the package. U-M President Mark Schlissel told the Free Press that it's important for the school to follow donors' wishes for investments in the school's endowments. There's a flip side, Schlissel argues — well-connected donors have the ability to guide the school toward profitable investment opportunities.

MSU, reeling from the crimes of Larry Nassar, who reportedly sexually assaulted hundreds of girls and young women over decades, has a tough road ahead: It's up to Engler to provide accountability, transparency and resolution to the university community. Forsyth's task is to determine whether university officials were complicit in abetting, or derelict in preventing, Nassar's crimes.

Because Secchia, a colorful public figure, has made no bones about his support for the university (he suggested parents overlooked Nassar's crimes in pursuit of gymnastic medals, and told a TV station that parents who aren't satisfied with MSU's conduct should send their children elsewhere), and because Forsyth, Schuette and Engler have ties to Secchia, some wonder whether any of the three men can claim neutrality, or whom, exactly, they intend to serve.

These aren't questions Michiganders should have to ask.

Universities like U-M, with its nearly $11-billion endowment, boast that those funds cushion the school against the vagaries of state support or the economic climate. That's true. But it's fair to ask whether pursuit of economic security has taken on a life of its own, a Frankenstein's monster in a self-serving loop.